Conventionally, there has been known a vehicle door lock control apparatus mounted in a vehicle for locking and unlocking the closed doors according to a user's operation (see, for example, Patent Documents 1 and 2).
Patent Documents 1 and 2 disclose an apparatus for driving and controlling the door lock mechanism to change the status of the vehicle's doors from locked to unlocked when a door lock signal is received from a wireless key and automatically change the status of the vehicle's doors from unlocked to locked in consideration of the vehicle security when the vehicle's door is not opened even after a prescribed time-out time has passed since the wireless door unlock operation has been completed.
Further, Patent Document 1 describes that the prescribed time-out time from the wireless door unlock operation to the automatic door locking as described above is changed according to the situation.
More specifically, Patent Document 1 describes that 1) when the elapsed time from when the doors are locked until the doors are next unlocked is less than a prescribed time, it is determined that the user is getting out of the vehicle and the door unlock operation is an erroneous operation, so the above elapsed time is set shorter; and 2) when the elapsed time from when the doors are locked until the doors are next unlocked is longer than the prescribed time, it is determined that the user is getting in the vehicle, and the above elapsed time is set longer (see, for example, paragraphs [0028] through [0032]).
[Patent document 1] Japanese Patent Application Publication No. H6-108726
[Patent document 2] Japanese Patent Application Publication No. H7-052751